Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday October 30, 2006 @08:44AM
from the declare-victory-and-withdraw dept.

An anonymous reader writes, "The ACLU announced on Friday that they were dropping their case against the US Government over the highly contested section 215 of the Patriot Act. ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson stated: 'While the reauthorized Patriot Act is far from perfect, we succeeded in stemming the damage from some of the Bush administration's most reckless policies. The ACLU will continue to monitor how the government applies the broad Section 215 power and we will challenge unconstitutional demands on a case-by-case basis.'"

One of the most amazing and amazingly unremarked upon aspects of these 9/11 commission hearings is the unanimity about the benefits of the Patriot Act. They don't often say it outright and the Democrats especially talk about how important "increased cooperation" between the CIA and FBI is. But the reality is that all of these "needed fixes" everyone keeps talking about are the Patriot Act. All of the "institutional barriers" that prevented us from "shaking the tree," all of the obvious things that should have been "checked out" etc are what the Patriot Act was designed to fix. It may not be perfect but I think it's hilarious that this seems to be the one bit of policy consensus from these hearings but few are willing to admit it.

Do you have evidence that the Patriot Act actually improved anything? I don't.

Is there any evidence that there are fewer institutional barriers to cooperation and coordination? Because if the rest of the agencies effected by the Patriot Act were reorganized like FEMA was, i don't feel very confident that the changes made to the US government are of any use at all.

Also, there is a difference between policy consensus, and the reality of implementation. (for instance, integrating national crime database

After the first attack on the WTT, there were no more attacks on American soil. And that was done without the patriot act. So, by your level of proof, I guess that it "proves" that patriot act is not needed, just a pres. with a desire to prevent it.

To state that it has made us safer is up for debate as well. There is no proof that it done its job.

If you want to include our embassies, USS cole, etc, then by your definition, we have lost another 3K ppl (after all, we own the soil that our bases are located on). 9/11 occured because the current president dropped the ball, not because clinton did. It should be obvious to all that there was plenty of evidence. Simply put, W. did not make it a top priority.

I haven't been attacked by tigers all my life. Clearly this is due to my tiger-repelling stone. To say that this stone has accomplished nothing flies in the face of the last twenty-one years of demonstrable safety versus tiger attacks.1995 -> 2001 didn't have any significant terrorist attacks either. Change to 1996-2001 if you prefer to include the Unabomber as significant during that time period, though I'd argue that you'd then need to include the November 2001 anthrax-letter attacks (insignificant as

Virtually no Americans have died in America from terrorist attacks following implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Virtually no Americans died in America from terrorist attacks prior to the Patriot Act, either, excepting one particular day in September. I am far more inclined to attribute the relative safety of the past 5 years to status quo than to some hastily and ill-conceived piece of legislation, but that's just me.

It's fair and important to point out that USAPATRIOT is more than just the vivil rights violations."Shaking the tree", however, was possible before it passed.

Proof by example: end of 1999. There were warnings of possible "millenium" terrorist attacks, not as numerous or as loud as the warnings before 9/11, but serious. The administration met, planned, and passed alerts down to various law enforcement organizations. An alert border guard then spotted somebody who turned out to have a car full of explosives m

Well the way our laws work if 1% of a complex set of regulations is unconstitutional, it shouldn't be passed. No one ever made the argument that the Patriot Act was all bad. But, the small percent of it that is unacceptible validates a challenge. Too bad the public was never allowed to hear an honest debate over it.The entire "institutional barriers" slogan was just a bunch of Rovian trash. There never *was* a legal barrier. Unless you consider your 4th amendment rights a barrier. The CIA can do thing

You must have a bad case of time/perspective warp. The first patriot act was passed almost unanimously. It's hard to blame "the opposition" for anything when there was no opposition. Also, in this case, i assume you mean the Republican controlled House, Senate and Executive, which, being the complete majority in 2 of the 3 branches of our Federal Government, i can hardly fathom calling "opposition", since they in fact, dictate the entire course of our government, and have for the past 6 years.

I don't know if there are any new ones, but I'd say all those laws banning automatic weapons, requiring registration, etc. count as attacks on (or rather an occupation of, since they're already in effect) the 2nd Amendment.

Didn't the assault weapons ban expire? Pro-gun conservatives have been in power for some time now, and you haven't even noticed the difference? By all accounts we ought to be living in a gun paradise by now. Why are people still harping on second amendment issues?

IANAL, but traditionally one drops a case if one is payed off, if one is likely to lose, or if one might lose and it's a bad test case for the issue. (The last applies if you're more concerned with the system than with one or two particular clients.) In this case, might the case have been dropped because of the possibility of it raising the "right to privacy" question before the supreme court? With the current court, such a question opens the door wide on abortion--there's no explicit right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution, and Roe v. Wade depends heavily on it. This may simply be far from the ideal court (or case) with which to revisit the question of that implicit right.

So maybe they did the math. Lose the right to privacy en masse or gain a little bit o' facism.

No explicit right to privacy? They might not use the word, but the Fourth Amendment says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, . .." This is what privacy means.

As I've said elsewhere, Roe vs. Wade is a prime example of why it's a really, really bad idea to accept bad jurisprudence just because it creates a good outcome in the short term.Roe rests on a rather silly argument. Rather than using any number of very good justifications for enabling abortion -- such as the equal protection clause, or better yet, just tossing it back to the legislature until public pressure forced the creation of a real "Right to Privacy" amendment -- the USSC created a legal fiction. Beg

The ACLU will continue to monitor how the government applies the broad Section 215 power and we will challenge unconstitutional demands on a case-by-case basis

That's easy, they could just change the contitution while their at it. The people in power seem to be destroying so much that was good in the US government. The problem with current system is that there are too few parties, so it is too easy for one party to enact dubious laws, whether its democrats or republicans.

Ever heard of a letter of marque and reprisal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque)? Most Americans have no idea what it is, but it's a little power that Congress has that allows anyone they designate (and they could write it out to all of humanity) to hunt down and deal with (or bring back) an enemy of the US. Commonly used for pirates, the "terrorists of the 17th and 18th centuries," this little power would be wonderfully applicable today as it would allow private bounty hunters, Muslims looking

During the 9/11 commission, I heard senators ask Rice out-right why we didn't hire someone to just kill bin Laden and Saddam years ago. Rice responded that hasn't been American policy in years, and that sovereign nations don't assassinate leaders.

The ban on assassinating leaders is just one more way that line animals and citizens take the brunt for the decisions made by those who do not have to sully their hands with the direct consequences of war, and as such, I think it serves as a condemnation of the system, not a point of honor.

If a person is "commander in chief" (or some kind of intermediate officer) of the armed forces, then he is a legitima

Over the past weeks, maybe months, I've heard many debates between candidates in the upcoming federal elections. Invariably, at some point the Republican candidate throws in "and s/he voted against/opposed the Patriot Act!", to which the Democrat doesn't argue against the Patriot Act or any part of the Patriot Act, but rather denies ever opposing it and voices their support of the Patriot Act.How did the Republicans manage to spin support of the Patriot Act into something politically mandatory? What happene

Reauthorized means, passed through congress again.:P I think it's significant that congress was dumb enough to let it get by again without more of a fuss. But then, i suppose this isn't a subject that anybody could raise without getting tarred and feathered.

Reauthorized means, passed through congress again.:P I think it's significant that congress was dumb enough to let it get by again without more of a fuss. But then, i suppose this isn't a subject that anybody could raise without getting tarred and feathered.

They weren't stupid, they were trying to hold onto their jobs. Vote against PATRIOT Act and in the next election, your opposition will campaign on it because you obviously 'are against keeping us SAFE', and in some cases 'want the terrists to WIN'.

Remember how they got the Federal ID law passed? They tailgated it on the back end of an appropriation bill reputedly to supply body armor to the troops in Iraq. You couldn't vote against the rider without voting for the appropriation. Would YOU want to face re-election when the opposition says 'Hey, he voted AGAINST body armor for our troops!!!'?

What really needs to happen is stopping the practice of putting riders on bills at the last minute. You can submarine all KINDS of nasty shit with the current system. Problem is, I don't see this happening. Ever.

They weren't stupid, they were trying to hold onto their jobs. Vote against PATRIOT Act and in the next election, your opposition will campaign on it

I am so tired of this miserable excuse for crappy behavior from our politicians. "Boo hoo, I had to save my career!" That would be understandable if they were plumbers or lawn cutters. But their JOB is to SERVE the American people and act in our interest. What is the point of them holding their jobs when they don't do it? Oh, I know, they need to stay

"Before your pride causes you to harden your heart and further close your ears, and before your ignorance provokes laughter, search the Christian Scriptures. Search even the histories of other nations that sat in the same positions of wealth, power, and authority that th

There was a sunset provision in the Patriot Act which required it to be reauthorized through a vote in both houses.

I know, I know, the first one to invoke the Nazi comparison loses, but I just read an interesting historical tidbit that Hitler's Enabling Act [furnituref...people.com] also required it to be reauthorized after four years.

Oh, you're right. The government would operate so much more efficiently if there were no descent. Let's just get rid of the judicial system and the legislature, too. They're just wastes of my hard earned dollars!

How is it not a waste to win a case against something that did not exist anymore? It makes as much sense as trying a dead man in court.

Because the law DID exist when they filed the case. The reason it "doesn't exist" anymore is that there was a sunset (ie expiration) clause built into the bill. Congress could have chosen to reauthorize PATRIOT 100% exactly as it had been passed before. Instead, they rewrote sections of it to give back some of the civil rights they had previously taken. In all likelihood it was the ACLU's initial court victory that convinced the government that it needed to tweak section 215 to make it more constitutional.

A case doesn't HAVE to get to the SCOTUS to convince Congress to rewrite a law, you know. If they see the writing on the wall, they're free to change it before they get ordered to. And therein lies the victory here.

Thanks ACLU. Thanks for increasing government expenditures and taking money out of my pocket.

Like the Republicans who currently control the purse strings wouldn't have found a way to increase government expenditures and take money out of your pocket.

You know, like wanting to prosecute Jose Padilla as a terrorist, holding this american citizen in jail for three years without counsel then dropping all terror related charges and finally settling on a charge of aiding terrorists in a civil, not military, court.

Seems that the government knew its case wasn't going to fly so it settled on lesser charges and claimed victory. After spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on legal fees on a case they couldn't win.

You know, like wanting to prosecute Jose Padilla as a terrorist, holding this american citizen in jail for three years without counsel then dropping all terror related charges and finally settling on a charge of aiding terrorists in a civil, not military, court.

You mean they sued him? Meaning that "aiding terrorists" is not a criminal offense? Or did you mean to say that they charged him in a civilian, but criminal (rather than civil), court? (I'm not implying you're wrong; I just don't know and want to fi

What happened is that he stepped off a plane from Pakistan and was arrested at O'Hare airport. He was held incommunicado and without charges for three years by the government on the grounds that he was an enemy combatant. During that time defense attorneys filed briefs on his behalf (how they found out I'm not quite clear) claiming that holding an american citizen in a military jail without charges is a violation of the persons Constitutional right under the Sixth Amendment. CNN link [cnn.com]

Government lawyers don't work on billable hours, they're paid a set salary. So really, unless the government hired outside counsel or more attorneys to deal with the problem, they didn't cost taxpayers much.

Of course, the state of Indiana recently gave a lot of money to the speaker of the Indiana House's old law firm buddy to help the state appeal a ruling regarding prayer in the statehouse.

I'm going to imagine for the sake of argument that you wrote that in all seriousness. So making the government explain itself is bad? Trying to make the government more transparent is bad? Or is it just bad that they failed, while 99% of the country sat with their thumbs up their asses watching "Survivor" without the slightest clue or even the desire to have a clue about what is going on around them in this country?

Right. What slays me is the regular folk who are so partisan in favor of one political party or the other. Give me a break! The party in power always grabs more power and the opposition tries to stop them. Why? Duh...to stay in power. When the winds of political change come, all they do they switch places.

People may originally get into politics for noble reasons but, eventually, it becomes about "doing business." And whether they are Republicans or Democrats it makes no difference. Eventually the

There are people who stay in government all their lives and remain honorable. I can name one who hasn't quite died yet, and one who shows great promise. They just don't wield the kind of power that control over vast amounts of campaign dollars provides.

That said, that's two politicians that I know anything about that appear honorable, as opposed to more than 50 that I know about as much about that I would class as "better rendered harmless".

They just don't wield the kind of power that control over vast amounts of campaign dollars provides.

But that's the point really. When organizations or people give to a politician's campaign, they *do* expect to get a return on their investment. And they usually get it. By the time that they get to any real position of power, most politicians are bought and paid for many times over. People who cannot be bought will not be given money, and will not get a great deal of power.

Our next presidential election is November, 2008, but we can take a big step towards fixing things if we take enough congressional seats away from Republicans. The way things are now, republicans can pass anything they want through congress and get it approved at the presidency. If Democrats get some control back in congress and/or the senate, we'll start seeing more of what our country was founded on: compromise.

I was wondering when you Americans are going to fix your country. [... ]

...Wha? Sorry, could you repeat that? We were too busy trying to figure out Lost...

Seriously, I don't think enough is going to change until electoral participation becomes as broadly embraced and popular a pastime as following the exploits of disasterous voids of character like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

"Its all find and dandy that the ACLU is trying to protect my civil liberties but when they are pushing to have a cross on the side of a road where someone has died be removed or pushing to have a stone ten commandments be removed, how are these civil liberties away from anyone?"

That's one of the many examples where the ACLU works to censor expression. I don't think they need to be "investigated". However, they can do more work to protect individual rights instead of fight against them, as they sometimes

It looks like you don't understand it. This part of the Bill of Rights is certainly not a justification for censoring individual expression that happens to be "religious." What part of "abridging the freedom of speech" do you not understand?

I would be very upset if the ACLU tried to prevent *individuals* from expressing their religious beliefs. However, I'm very much in favor of the ACLU's fight to remove *governmental* expressions of religion. The ten commandments that the ACLU fought against were not displayed in front of a (private citizen's) house, they were in front of a public courthouse. There was no "individual expression," it was a government sponsored display of religion. If the judge who erected the ten commandments had put them

The problem is that displays of crosses on the right of way of the road, which is government owned land, and the display of religious artifacts such as monuments to the ten commandments amount to an apparent endorsement, by the government, of religion, said religion almost always being Christianity. For example, I do not recall a single instance of seeing Shiva in a house of legislature, a voodoo altar at an accident site, or a monument to Ayn Rand on a courthouse lawn. When we talk about the US government's sponsorship of religion, It is Christianity first, last, and always.

Now, if some farmer wants to put up crosses in his field, or a church wants to put up religious monuments on church property, or any private citizen wants to erect a shrine to whomever, these are all examples of free expression by the citizens and as such, they are what the constitution seems to be worded to protect. It would be very difficult, I think, to read the first amendment as anything but encouraging the citizen and discouraging the government with regard to religious expression.

Remember the times: This country was founded by people who had been ruthlessly suppressed by the British government because the religion they followed was not that of the state. In 1789, when James Madison introduced the first tentative bill of rights, feelings were very strong that one religious sect or another must not gain religious control of the people through the mechanism of the government.

Madison's suggestion regarding religion read as follows:

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.

That was whittled down to this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

This final version of this idea prevents the establishment of a national religion, and also prohibits government aid to any religion, even on an non-exclusive basis, or so the courts have said until very recently.

Now, there are state constitutions that read slightly differently; however, the supreme court has interpreted the due process clause of the 14th amendment to mean that states may not override this particular section of the bill of rights (the 1st amendment is part of the bill of rights.)

So this means that states shouldn't be putting religious symbols on road right of ways, either, nor should they be erecting monuments to any particular religion's artifacts, creeds, or personalities.

Remember: The bill of rights assigns rights to the people. It takes them away from the government. So you can't really argue that telling the government it can't erect religious artifacts suppressed the speech of the people based on the 1st amendment. It suppresses the ability of the government to tacitly or directly sponsor religion, and that is clearly what the intent of the framers was, not to mention the authors of the bill of rights. The problem, as always, is that when a government expresses a preference for a religion, those who do not follow that religion either are, or feel they are, being marginalized. This is a situation that it is very important to avoid, specifically so that no citizen's expression of religion is likely to be curtailed by concerns about how the government might react to that expression.

Finally, as the government's support of religion is almost exclusively Christian — crosses at the roadside, the ten commandments, Christmas displays, creches, etc. — it is clear that the current situation serves to discommode anyone who isn't a Christian. Therefore it would seem obvious, at least to me, that we have arrived at precisely the birthing of religious sponsorship the 1st amendment was designed to prevent us from getting to.

Do you really think that if a private citizen leaves something alongside the road, that it is a government endorsement???? I don't care if it as Jewish, Christian, Muslim grave crescent, does not matter to me.

Until the farmer decides to light them on fire. Then it's a hate crime.

It seems to me that any reasonable reading of the constitution supports the erecting of a (cross | flag | other symbol or structure) that you paid for on your own land, and subsequently lighting it afire or otherwise treating it harshly (or coddling it), as constitutionally protected free expression. You don't want to let a fire get out of control, is all, because then you're risking your neighbor's property, which has its own prot

Religious "decorations", as you call them, amount to a tacit endorsement of the religion they represent, by the government, and that is a bad thing on every level.

I firmly believe that my community has the right to decorate its public spaces in any way it chooses

Then again, you have missed the point. The ideas that underlie the constitution are designed to protect the individual first, not power-wielding groups such as your local, state and federal governments.

If you're opposed to the Bill of Rights and would prefer the British system, just say so directly. If you're looking for actual rational of why the U.S. isn't that way, read The Federalist Papers (way before WW II), not just what a bunch of people on Slashdot have to say.

You know, you're right. Government monitoring of suspicious communications likely increases the chance of catching a criminal or an enemy agent. Know what would increase the chances even more? Government monitoring of all communications, all movements, all public and private activities. And when the government has perfect intelligence on every person associated with the U.S., when every terrorist has been found and a terrorist attack in the US becomes quit impossible, who will save us from our government?

when [the ACLU is] pushing to have a cross on the side of a road where someone has died be removed

I'd be very interested if you would provide a source for this, because frankly, I don't believe you. Either that, or there's significantly more to the story than you're mentioning (e.g., the cross was put there by the state, or it was on public property and the owner wanted it removed, or something like that).

I assume you meant "private" property, as with public property, well, the public would be the owner, and if the public wanted it removed, a simple town-wide vote would better make such a decision.
My two cents:
I'm not Christian (Pagan, actually, but that's not the point), but I'm not "offended" seeing Christian symbolism in a predominatly Christian region. Take for example, the "controversy" surrounding the creche. Back in my home town,

Newsflash fuckhead, I'm not willing to give up my freedom and rights for a while, not one little bit. Anyone who has studied history or has a grain of common sense or who isn't some inbred Fox news watching fucktard such as yourself would know and understand that once you give up your freedom and rights, even when you're told it's for a 'little while', it's hard to get them back. People such as yourself have no right to live in a free countr

"Its all find and dandy that the ACLU is trying to protect my civil liberties but when they are pushing to have a cross on the side of a road where someone has died be removed or pushing to have a stone ten commandments be removed, how are these civil liberties away from anyone?"

There's something going on if you can't tell the difference between different types of public land.

Roads are public in the COMMON sense - a cross memorialising someone who died on a particular stretch doesn't actually impose o

It was just clarified that non-citizen enemy combatants do not enjoy that right.

Amendment 5: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

It says "no person," not "no citizen" or "no non-combatant" or anything else. It means no person, period. That includes Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, and Satan himself. In other words, your "clarification" is explicitly unconstitutional!

Unless you want Osama to have access to an attorney?

You betcha! What, are you afraid he'd somehow manage to win anyway? Don't you have any confidence in our laws and the ability of the US prosecution to put forth enough evidence to convict him?

Yes, but it has been ruled several times that non-citizens are not held to the strictures of the Constituion or Bill of Rights by our Supreme Court - the Geneva Conventions used to be useful as they did cover world wide definitions of combatants / soldiers / POWs.

But the new law that Bush and Co. passed circumvented that and took the right to name who and what a combatant was away from the conventions and into the loving arms of the Executive & Congress.

This is not a law-enforcement issue. We're in a war. We don't arrest wartime enemies and give them lawyers and court dates. We kill them. That is how it has always been in this and every other country in the world throughout all of history.

We're in a war. We don't arrest wartime enemies and give them lawyers and court dates. We kill them.

Who specifically are we at war with? That is to say, other than "the terrorists." Who do we have to kill or who has to surrender to end this war, bin Laden, the Taliban? The fact is, we are not at war in any meaningful sense of the word. We are at war only in the same sense that we are at war with drugs and poverty.

Who specifically are we at war with? That is to say, other than "the terrorists." Who do we have to kill or who has to surrender to end this war, bin Laden, the Taliban?

Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the Taliban at present. Hezbollah is operating in the US [nationalreview.com], and has threatened the US, so its time may come. Hamas, also operating in the US [washtimes.com] might get there too.

The fact is, we are not at war in any meaningful sense of the word. We are at war only in the same sense that we are at war with drugs and poverty.

Your formatting of the 5th Amendment [findlaw.com] is bad. I fixed it for you:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be depr

The use of the capitalized version of "militia" means that this clause applies specifically to US armed forces -- of which there were none at the time the document was written, only state-run militias thus the use of "militia" as a stand in-- and provides solely for military "courts martial" during wartime.

The phrase "the land or naval forces" refers to the army or navy. Putting an enemy on trail after capture by the army would be part of that "cases arising in the land or naval forces" referred to in the

You bet your ass I do! Justice is best served in public, where the accused have every opportunity to defend themselves, and everyone can see the evidence for themselves. And if the accused is found guilty, it is because the evidence clearly indicates their guilt.

Thank you for posting this!!!! I wish I had mod points, because this is gonna get buried. Nice to see there's *some* sense still out here in/. land. I'm beginning to wonder. The ACLU has done more to destroy American Liberty than they *ever* tried to save. *sniffle* Sometimes I'm glad my grandparents are dead.